On
a 29 March:2006 Total
solar eclipse visible in equatorial West Africa, the Sahara, the western
Mediterranean, Turkey, and Russia. — (051003)2003
The Baldin Collection goes on display at Moscow's Museum of Architecture.
— more2001
Caterina Provenzano, 8 months old, is kidnapped in the morning from her
home in Alcamo, Sicily, by two men posing as gas company workers. 14 hours
later, thanks to an anonymous call, she is found alive and well in a blanket
in a cardboard box on the side of a road near a refinery. Her grandfather
is a well-off marble merchant, but no ransom was paid.1999
The Dow Jones industrial average closes at 10'006.78, first time above 10'000.1999 Luis González Macchi se convierte en el nuevo hombre
fuerte de Paraguay tras la dimisión del presidente Raúl Alberto Cubas Grau.
[en cambio el hombre fuerte de Cuba nunca se llamó Fidel Paraguas].1997 El Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU envía una fuerza
internacional a Albania con 2500 soldados de España, Francia y Grecia, entre
otros países.

^1996 Electricity futures
start trading. Tthe
New York Mercantile Exchange
(NYMEX) opens a new commodities market for power supplies. The power contract,
set to be delivered that summer at the California-Oregon border, hit the
board shortly after the opening bell. The power market enjoyed a lively
first day of action as more than 1000 contracts changed hands. Still, some
traders remained cautious about Wall Street’s newest trading pit. As one
electricity trader noted, the electricity market had the potential to be
extremely "volatile." But, for financial experts like Stephen Fleishman,
a utility analyst with Dean Witter, the wild fluctuations were precisely
what made the power market so appealing. According to Fleishman, the volatility
would help establish a "transparent, competitive price" for power and thus
nourish the power industry’s move to a newly deregulated playing field.
Nevertheless the limit imposed by California
on the price of electricity to consumers would result in a shortage of electricity
in that state, leading to a crisis in 2001.California/Oregon
Border Electricity In the
development of the electricity futures contract, the Exchange has recognized
that the market is currently divided into three broad regions: the eastern
United States, the western part of the continent, and Texas. These contracts
focus on the western United States which encompasses a large geographical
area with a number of major suppliers representing virtually every available
source of electric generation - oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydro,
and geothermal. The suppliers are the core of an active wholesale market,
and are a diverse group: investor-owned utilities, municipally owned utilities,
co-generators, government power authorities, and power marketers. The region
also has an active wholesale market, and utilities in California have recently
begun operating under a performance-based ratemaking policy. The Exchange
has electricity futures and options contracts based on two delivery locations:
one based on delivery at the California/Oregon border, the other at the
Palo Verde switchyard in Arizona. Both sites are major market centers. Given
the rapid development in the power markets in this region, the Exchange
felt it was prudent to offer contracts representing both delivery sites
in order to ensure the futures market will coincide with the industry's
need for a price reference and risk management tool. The contracts are traded
on the NYMEX Division of the Exchange. Under the terms of the NYMEX/COMEX
merger, COMEX Division members will have proprietary trading rights for
two years from the date of its launch. On March 29, 1996, the New York Mercantile
Exchange launched two electricity futures contracts - one based on delivery
at the California/Oregon border, the other at the Palo Verde switchyard
in Arizona - providing the industry with a price reference and risk management
tool. One month later, on April 26, the Exchange launched companion options
contracts.

1995 IBM sues for patent
infringement Conner
Peripherals, a disk-drive maker based in San Jose, filed a lawsuit against
IBM, accusing the company of patent infringement. The company said IBM had
infringed on its power-management technology patent, which prevented unnecessary
disk-drive operation and could extend battery life in portable computers.
In 1993, IBM had sued Conner for allegedly infringing on data storage technology
patents.

1995 Hewlett-Packard technology
advances networking
Hewlett-Packard announced a new technology that would simplify document
printing across computer networks. Previously, sending documents through
a network to a distant location could be problematic, but improved networking
capabilities throughout the '90s smoothed this and other network issues.
Novell had recently announced similar network printing technology.

^1995 Prodigy VP quits
Scott Kurnit, executive vice president of Prodigy Service Company, abruptly
resigned to join an online venture started by MCI Communications Corporation
on this day in 1995. Prodigy, one of the earliest online services, had fallen
behind America Online and CompuServe in subscribers and had laid off 14
percent of its seven hundred employees in December 1994. The joint venture
between Sears and IBM had lost more than $1 billion without turning a profit
since it was founded in the mid-1980s. Under Kurnit, Prodigy became the
first commercial online service to offer Internet access.

^1975 Last US troops leave Vietnam.
Under the provisions of the Paris Peace Accords
signed on 27 January, 1973, the last US troops depart South Vietnam, ending
nearly 10 years of US military presence in that country. The US Military
Assistance Command Vietnam headquarters was disestablished. Only a Defense
Attaché Office and a few Marine guards remained at the US Embassy
in Saigon, although roughly 8500 US civilians stayed on as technical advisers
to the South Vietnamese. Also on this day: As part of the Accords, Hanoi
releases the last 67 of its acknowledged US prisoners of war, bringing the
total number released to 591. In Saigon,
some 7000 US Department of Defense civilian employees remained behind to
aid South Vietnam in conducting what looked to be a fierce and ongoing war
with communist North Vietnam. In 1961, after two decades of indirect military
aid, US President John F. Kennedy sent the first large force of US military
personnel to Vietnam to bolster the ineffectual autocratic regime of South
Vietnam against the communist North. Three years later, with the South Vietnamese
government crumbling, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered limited bombing
raids on North Vietnam, and Congress authorized the use of US troops.
By 1965, North Vietnamese offensives left
President Johnson with two choices: escalate US involvement or withdraw.
Johnson ordered the former, and troop levels soon jumped to more than 300'000
as the US began the largest aerial bombing campaign in history. During the
next few years, the extended length of the war, the high number of US casualties,
and the exposure of US involvement in war crimes, such as the massacre at
My Lai, helped turn many in the United States against the Vietnam War. The
communists' Tet Offensive of 1968 crushed US hopes of an imminent end to
the conflict and galvanized US opposition to the war. In response, Johnson
announced in March 1968 that he would not seek reelection, citing what he
perceived to be his responsibility in creating a perilous national division
over Vietnam. He also authorized the beginning of peace talks. In the spring
of 1969, as protests against the war escalated in the United States, US
troop strength in the war-torn country reached its peak at nearly 550'000
men. Richard Nixon, the new US president, began US troop withdrawal and
"Vietnamization" of the war effort that year, but he intensified bombing.
Large US troop withdrawals continued in the early 1970s as President Nixon
expanded air and ground operations into Cambodia and Laos in attempts to
block enemy supply routes along Vietnam's borders. This expansion of the
war, which accomplished few positive results, led to new waves of protests
in the United States and elsewhere.
Finally, in January 1973, representatives of the United States, North and
South Vietnam, and the Vietcong signed a peace agreement in Paris, ending
the direct US military involvement in the Vietnam War. Its key provisions
included a cease-fire throughout Vietnam, the withdrawal of US forces, the
release of prisoners of war, and the reunification of North and South Vietnam
through peaceful means. The South Vietnamese government was to remain in
place until new elections were held, and North Vietnamese forces in the
South were not to advance further nor be reinforced. In reality, however,
the agreement was little more than a face-saving gesture by the US government.
Even before the last US troops departed on 29 March, the communists violated
the cease-fire, and by early 1974 full-scale war had resumed. At the end
of 1974, South Vietnamese authorities reported that 80'000 of their soldiers
and civilians had been killed in fighting during the year, making it the
most costly of the Vietnam War. On 30 April 1975, the last few persons from
the US still in South Vietnam were airlifted out of the country as Saigon
fell to communist forces. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin, accepting the
surrender of South Vietnam later in the day, remarked, "You have nothing
to fear; between Vietnamese there are no victors and no vanquished. Only
the Americans have been defeated." The Vietnam War was the longest and most
unpopular foreign war in US history and cost 58'000 US lives. As many as
two million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were killed.

^
1974 Mariner 10 visits Mercury
The unmanned US space probe Mariner 10, launched
by NASA on 03 November 1973, becomes the first spacecraft to visit the planet
Mercury, sending back close-up images of a celestial body usually obscured
because of its proximity to the sun. Mariner 10 had visited the planet Venus
eight weeks before, but only for the purpose of using Venus’ gravity to
whip it toward the closest planet to the sun. In three fly-bys of Mercury
between 1974 and 1975, the NASA spacecraft took detailed images of the planet,
and succeeded in mapping about 35% of the planet’s heavily cratered, moonlike
surface. Mercury is the second smallest planet in the solar system and completes
its solar orbit in only eighty-eight earth days. Data sent back by Mariner
10 discounts a previously held theory that the planet does not spin on its
axis; in fact, the planet has a very slow rotational period that stretches
over fifty-eight earth days. Mercury is a waterless, airless world that
alternately bakes and freezes as it slowly rotates. Highly inhospitable,
Mercury’s surface temperature varies from 800 degrees Fahrenheit when facing
the sun and –279 degrees when facing away. Mercury has no known satellites.
Mariner 10 is the only human spacecraft that has visited the planet to this
date.

1974 Eight Ohio National Guardsmen are indicted on charges
stemming from the shooting deaths of four students at Kent State University.
The guardsmen would be acquitted (one more example of the license to kill
innocent people given to the armed forces and police).

1973 Last US troops leave Vietnam, 9 years after Tonkin
Gulf Resolution 1971 US Army Lt. William L. Calley
Jr. was convicted of murdering at least 22 Vietnamese civilians in the My
Lai massacre. Calley ended up spending three years under house arrest.

^1971 Guilty of My Lai
massacre, Calley will serve only 3 years in house arrest
Lt. William L. Calley is found guilty
of premeditated murder at My Lai by a US Army court-martial at Fort
Benning, Georgia. Calley, a platoon leader, had led his men in a massacre
of Vietnamese civilians, including women and children, at My Lai 4,
a cluster of hamlets in Quang Ngai Province on March 16, 1968. The
unit had been conducting a search-and-destroy mission to locate the
48th Viet Cong (VC) Local Force Battalion. The unit entered Son My
village but found only women, children, and old men. Frustrated by
unanswered losses due to snipers and mines, the soldiers took out
their anger on the villagers, indiscriminately shooting people as
they ran from their huts. The soldiers rounded up the survivors and
led them to a nearby ditch where they were shot.
Calley was charged with six specifications of premeditated murder.
During the trial, Chief Army prosecutor Capt. Aubrey Daniel charged
that Calley ordered Sgt. Daniel Mitchell to "finish off the rest"
of the villagers. The prosecution stressed that all the killings were
committed despite the fact that Calley's platoon had met no resistance
and that he and his men had not been fired on. The My Lai massacre
had initially been covered up but came to light one year later. An
Army board of inquiry, headed by Lt. Gen. William Peers, investigated
the massacre and produced a list of 30 persons who knew of the atrocity,
but only 14 were charged with crimes. All eventually had their charges
dismissed or were acquitted by courts-martial except Calley, whose
platoon allegedly killed 200 innocents. Calley was found guilty of
personally murdering 22 civilians and sentenced to life imprisonment,
but his sentence was reduced to 20 years by the Court of Military
Appeals and further reduced later to 10 years by the Secretary of
the Army. Proclaimed by much of the public as a "scapegoat," Calley
was paroled in 1974 after having served, in house arrest, about a
third of his 10-year sentence.

^1971 Manson and followers sentenced
to die. In Los
Angeles, California, cult leader Charles Manson and three followers,
Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten, and Patricia Krenwinkle, are sentenced
to death for the brutal 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate and six
others. In 1967, Manson, a lifetime criminal, was released from a
federal penitentiary in Washington State and traveled to San Francisco,
California, where he attracted a following among rebellious young
women with troubled emotional lives. Manson established a cult based
on his concept of "Helter Skelter"--an apocalyptic philosophy predicting
that out of an imminent racial war in America would emerge five ruling
angels: himself, who would have taken on the role of Jesus Christ,
and the four members of the Beatles, the popular British rock group.
Manson convinced his followers that it would be necessary to murder
celebrities in order to attract attention to the cult, and in 1969,
they targeted Sharon Tate, a marginally successful actress who was
married to Roman Polanski, a film director. On 07 August 1969, Manson’s
followers murdered Rosemary and Leno LaBianca, a Los Angeles married
couple, in a dress rehearsal for the planned Tate murder. Late the
next night, under Manson’s detailed instructions, four of his followers
drove up to Cielo Drive above Beverly Hills and burst into Polanski
and Tate’s home. Over the next few hours, they engaged in a murderous
rampage that left five dead, including a very pregnant Sharon Tate,
three of her friends, and an eighteen-year-old male who was visiting
the caretaker of the estate. The case went unsolved for over a year
before the Los Angeles Police Department discovered the Manson connection,
and, following confessions by various members of his cult, Manson
and five others were indicted on charges of murder and conspiracy
to commit murder. On 25 January 1972, Manson and three others were
found guilty and on 29 March, all four were sentenced to death.
The trial of another defendant, Charles
"Tex" Watson, was delayed by extradition proceedings, but he was likewise
found guilty and sentenced to death.
In 1972, the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty
in California, and Manson and his followers’ death sentences were
reduced to life imprisonment.

^
1951 Rosenbergs convicted of espionage.
In one of the most sensational trials
in US history, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of conspiracy
to commit espionage for their role in passing atomic secrets to the
Soviets during and after World War II. The husband and wife were later
sentenced to death and were executed in June 1953. The conviction
of the Rosenbergs was the climax of a fast-paced series of events
that were set in motion with the arrest of British physicist Klaus
Fuchs in Great Britain in February 1950. British authorities, with
assistance from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, gathered evidence
that Fuchs, who worked on developing the atomic bomb both in England
and the United States during World War II, had passed top-secret information
to the Soviet Union. Fuchs almost immediately confessed his role and
began a series of accusations. Fuchs confessed that Harry Gold of
the US had served as a courier for the Soviet agents to whom Fuchs
passed along his information. US authorities captured Gold, who thereupon
pointed the finger at David Greenglass, a young man who worked at
the laboratory where the atomic bomb had been developed. Gold claimed
Greenglass was even more heavily involved in spying than Fuchs. Upon
his arrest, Greenglass readily confessed and then accused his sister
and brother-in-law, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, of being the spies
who controlled the entire operation.
Both Ethel and Julius had strong leftist
leanings and had been heavily involved in labor and political issues
in the United States during the late-1930s and 1940s. Julius was arrested
in July and Ethel in August 1950. By present-day standards, the trial
was remarkably fast. It began on 06 March, and the jury had convicted
both of conspiracy to commit espionage by 29 March. The Rosenbergs
were not helped by a defense that many at the time, and since, have
labeled incompetent. More harmful, however, was the testimony of Greenglass
and Gold. Greenglass declared that Julius Rosenberg had set up a meeting
during which Greenglass passed the plans for the atomic bomb to Gold.
Gold supported Greenglass's accusation and admitted that he then passed
the plans along to a Soviet agent. This testimony sealed Julius's
fate, and although there was little evidence directly tying Ethel
to the crime, prosecutors claimed that she was the brain behind the
whole scheme. The jury found both guilty. A few days later, the Rosenbergs
were sentenced to death. They were executed on 19 June 1953 in Sing
Sing Prison in New York. Both maintained their innocence to the end.
The Rosenberg case got worldwide attention.
Their supporters claimed they were being made scapegoats to the Cold
War hysteria that was sweeping the US. The French writer and philosopher
Jean-Paul Sartre called their execution a "legal lynching." In any
case Ethel was innocent of any grave crime and was accused only in
order to bring pressure on Julius (who didn't give in to it). Others
pointed out that even if the Rosenbergs did pass secrets along to
the Soviets during World War II, Russia had been an ally, not an enemy,
of the United States at the time. Those who supported the verdict
insisted that the couple got what they deserved for endangering national
security by giving top-secret information on a devastating weapon
to Communists.

^1945 US Army conquers Frankfurt.
General George S. Patton's 3rd Army
takes Frankfurt, as "Old Blood and Guts" continues his march east.
Frankfurt am Main, literally "On the Main" River, in western Germany,
was the mid-19th century capital of Germany (it was annexed by Prussia
in 1866, ending its status as a free city). Once integrated into a
united German nation, it developed into a significant industrial city-and
hence a prime target for Allied bombing during the war. That bombing
began as early as July 1941, during a series of British air raids
against the Nazis. In March 1944, Frankfurt suffered extraordinary
damage during a raid that saw 27'000 tons of bombs dropped on Germany
in a single month. Consequently, Frankfurt's medieval Old Town was
virtually destroyed (although it would be rebuilt in the postwar period-replete
with modern office buildings).
In late December 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, General Patton
broke through the German lines of the besieged Belgian city of Bastogne,
relieving its valiant defenders. Patton then pushed the Germans east.
Patton's goal was to cross the Rhine, even if not a single bridge
was left standing over which to do it. But as he reached the banks
of the river on 22 March 1945, he found that one bridge--the Ludendorff
Railway Bridge, located south of Mainz at Oppenheim--had not been
destroyed. American troops had already made a crossing on 07 March
 a signal moment in the war and in history, as an enemy army
had not crossed the Rhine since Napoleon accomplished the feat in
1805. Patton grandly made his crossing at Oppenheim, and from the
bridgehead created there, Old Blood and Guts and his 3rd Army headed
east and captured Frankfurt on the 29th. Patton then crossed through
southern Germany and into Czechoslovakia, only to encounter an order
not to take the capital, Prague, as it had been reserved for the Soviets.
Patton was, not unexpectedly, livid.

^1879 British victory at Khambula
At Khambula in northwest Zululand,
a force of 2000 British and Colonial troops under the command of British
Colonel Henry Evelyn Wood defeats 20'000 Zulus under King Cetshwayo,
turning the tide in the favor of the British in the Zulu War. In 1843,
Britain succeeded the Boers as the rulers of Natal, which administered
Zululand, the neighboring kingdom of the Zulu people. Boers, also
known as Afrikaners, were the descendants of the original Dutch settlers
who came to South Africa in the seventeenth century. Zulus, a migrant
people from the north, had also come to southern Africa during the
seventeenth century, settling around the Tugela River region. In 1838,
the Boers, migrating north to elude the new British dominions in the
south, first came into armed conflict with the Zulus, who were under
the rule of King Dingane at the time. The European migrants succeeded
in overthrowing Dingane in 1840, replacing him with his son Mpande,
who became a vassal of the new Boer republic of Natal. In 1843, the
British took over Natal and Zululand. In 1872, King Mpande died and
was succeeded by his son Cetshwayo, who was determined to resist European
domination in his territory. In December 1878, King Cetshwayo rejected
the British demand that he disband his troops, and in January of the
next year, British forces invaded Zululand to suppress Cetshwayo.
The British suffered grave defeats at Isandlwana, where 1300 British
soldiers were killed or wounded, and at Hlobane Mountain, but, on
29 March, the tide turned in favor of the British at the Battle of
Khambula. At Ulundi in July, Cetshwayo’s forces were utterly routed
and the Zulus were forced to surrender to the British. In 1887, faced
with continuing Zulu rebellions, the British formally annexed Zululand
and, in 1897, it became a part of Natal, which joined the Union of
South Africa in 1910.

1867 The British Parliament passes the North America Act
to create the Dominion of Canada. 1865 Engagement
at Lewis Farm, Virginia 1865 Appomattox Campaign
begins 1865 Siege at Spanish Fort, Alabama continues.
1848 Ice jam on the Niagara! An enormous ice dam forms at the source
of the Niagara
River on the eastern shore of Lake Erie. Just after midnight, the thunderous
sound of water surging over the great falls at Niagara comes to a halt.
The eery silence persists throughout the day and into the next evening until
the waters of Lake Erie break through the blockage and resume their course
down the river and over the falls.

^1847 Scott takes San Juan de Ulua
During the Mexican-American War, Mexican
forces surrender the fortified city of Vera Cruz and its massive fortress,
San Juan de Ulua, after a massive one-week bombardment by US artillery.
On 09 March, US forces under General Winfield Scott invaded Mexico
three miles south of Vera Cruz. Encountering little resistance from
the 5000 Mexican troops massed in the fortified city of Vera Cruz,
by nightfall the last of Scott’s 10'000 men had come ashore without
the loss of a single life. It was the largest amphibious landing in
US history, and was not surpassed until World War II. The Mexican-American
War began with a dispute over the US government’s 1845 annexation
of Texas. In January 1846, President James K. Polk, a strong advocate
of westward expansion, ordered General Zachary Taylor to occupy disputed
territory between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers. Mexican troops
attacked Taylor’s forces, and on 13 May 1846, Congress approved a
declaration of war against Mexico. On 09 March, 1847, General Scott’s
forces landed near Vera Cruz, and, by 29 March, with very few American
casualties, they had taken the city and its fortress, San Juan de
Ulua. On April 9, Scott began a devastating march to Mexico City,
ending on 14 September, when triumphant US forces entered the Mexican
capital and raised the American flag over the Hall of Montezuma. On
02 February, 1848, representatives from the US and Mexico signed the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, formally ending the Mexican War, recognizing
Texas as part of the United States, and extending the boundaries of
the United States west to the Pacific Ocean.

^1806 US Congress authorizes survey of Cumberland Road.
Congress authorizes surveying to begin
for the construction of the Cumberland Road, which sped the way for
thousands of Americans heading west. Four years earlier, Congress
had recognized the importance of building a network of national roads
to facilitate western immigration. The 1803 act that admitted Ohio
into the Union included a provision setting aside money from the sale
of public lands to use in "laying out, opening, and making roads."
By 1806, enough funds had accumulated to begin surveying a proposed
national road from Cumberland, Maryland, through the Appalachian Mountains
to Wheeling, Virginia, on the Ohio River. The task of surveying the
route for the new national road went to the Army's Corps of Engineers,
setting an important precedent for the military's involvement in building
transportation routes that would be used for non-military purposes.
The Corps of Engineers also built the road once construction began
in 1811. Progress was slow, and the Corps did not complete the 220-km
road until 1818. Its value, though, became apparent well before it
was completed. Stagecoaches, heavy freight wagons, and droves of stock
animals soon crowded the route in numbers far surpassing those expected.
The Corps even had to maintain and repair older sections of the road
before the entire route was completed. The Cumberland Road proved
such a success that Congress agreed to continue extending it westward.
By 1850, this National Road, as it came to be called, reached all
the way to Indianapolis. By that time, mid-western excitement over
the National Road was fading in favor of a fever for canal building.
The Cumberland-National Road, however, set the precedent for further
government involvement in road building. The resulting network of
roads greatly facilitated American expansion into western territory,
and parts of the route blazed for the Cumberland Road are still followed
to this day by interstate and state highways. The
Great National Pike, also known as the Cumberland Road, became the
first highway funded by the national treasury. Built between 1806
and 1840, the Great National Pike stretched from Cumberland, Maryland,
to Vandalia, Illinois. On this day the first appropriation of $30'000
was made by congressional act. Eventually over $6 million was appropriated
for the highway. In 1856, control over the road was turned over to
the states through which it ran. Roads would be left to the devices
of the states almost exclusively until the dawn of the automobile.
Henry Ford and other leaders of the automotive industry were instrumental
in encouraging the federal funding of national highways.

1797
Future parents of Frankenstein's author marry.^top^
Social critic Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the earliest and most eloquent
proponents of women's rights, marries William Godwin, the most famous
radical reformer of his time. Wollstonecraft, who had been raised
by a tyrannical, abusive, and alcoholic father, was philosophically
opposed to marriage, as was Godwin. However, the two decided to marry
after Wollstonecraft became pregnant with his child. Wollstonecraft
supported herself from age 19 as a companion, governess, and teacher.
When her sister fled an unhappy marriage, Wollstonecraft took her
in and hid her for months from her abusive husband, who had the legal
right to force his spouse to return to him. The two, along with another
sister, started a school. Initially a success, the school eventually
went bankrupt and left Wollstonecraft burdened with debt.
At age 27, Wollstonecraft published a semi-autobiographical novel
and a children's book, the latter of which became a smashing success.
She began publishing book reviews in a journal of political reform
and writing social criticism. In 1790, she wrote A Vindication of
the Rights of Man, about the French Revolution. Two years later, she
produced A Vindication of the Rights of Women, a coolly reasoned,
well-balanced argument for women's rights, published at a time when
women had no rights or property of their own. A supporter of the ideals
behind the revolution, she moved to France in 1793, where she fell
in love with an American man. After she gave birth to his child, he
abandoned her. Depressed, she tried unsuccessfully to kill herself.
She returned to London and became part of an influential group of
radical intellectuals. In 1796, she fell in love with William Godwin,
a well-known writer who associated with the same circles. The couple
married when they discovered she was pregnant and lived happily for
six monthsuntil Wollstonecraft died after giving birth on 30
August 1797 to a daughter who would become Mary
Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein
and wife of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

2003 Muhammed Darwish, 17, Palestinian, shot in the
chest by Israeli troops who fire at Palestinians who throw stones at their
armored vehicles, in a refugee camp in Nablus, West Bank. The Reuters body
count of the al-Aqsa intifada is now “at least” 1957 Palestinians
and 727 Israelis.2003 Suicide bomber Ali Hammadi
al-Namani; and an Iraqi cyclist, and Pfc. Michael Russell Creighton Weldon,
20; Pfc. Diego Fernando Rincon, 19; Specialist Michael Edward Curtin, 23,
of South Plains, NJ; and Sgt. Eugene Williams, 24, US soldiers
of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, manning a checkpoint on the Highway
9 to Kerbala, at Al Kifl, just north of Najaf, Iraq, as they have al-Mani
open the trunk of the taxi he is driving and he detonates it, while the
cyclist just happens to be passing by. Al-Namani was an Iraqi army noncomissioned
officer.2003 Lance Cpl. William W. White, 24, of Brooklyn,
N.Y., of the 3rd Amphibious Assault Battalion, 1st Marine Division, dies
in a vehicle accident in Iraq.2003 Two US Special Forces soldiers,
when their four vehicle-mounted reconnaissance patrol is attacked near Geresk,
Helmand province, Afghanistan, by four Taliban gunmen riding on two motorcycles.
Another US Special Forces soldier and three Afghan soldiers are wounded.2003 Carlo Urbani, 46, of SARS, in Bangkok, Thailand, where
he had been hospitalized for 15 days. An Italian physician, president of
Medici Senza Frontiere Italia,
he was working for the World
Health Organization in the Hanoi, Vietnam, French International Hospital,
and became the first to identify Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome as he
was treating a US-born Chinese businessman, 48, arriving from Shanghai,
who became its first recognized fatality. 28 February 2003 was when Dr.
Urbani first saw the patient, who had been admitted to the hospital on 26
February 2003, with high fever, dry cough, myalgia (muscle soreness) and
mild sore throat and, over the next four days developed increasing breathing
difficulties, severe thrombocytopenia (low platelet count) and signs of
adult respiratory distress syndrome requiring ventilator support.
On 02 March 2003, he was transfered to Hong Kong, where he died on 13 March
2003. Of the more than 30 who got SARS among the staff of the Hanoi hospital,
a nurse, 46, who had treated the businessman died on 15 March 15; a French
doctor, 66, on 19 March; a Vietnamese nurse and doctor on 24 March. To date,
SARS has killed at least 54 persons and sickened at least 1550, with the
biggest number of cases and deaths in China's Guangdong province, where
an earlier outbreak began, unrecognized, in November 2002.2002
Five Palestinians; and Israelis First Lieutenant Boaz Pomerantz,
22, from Kiryat Shmona; and Staff Sergeant Roman Shliapstein,
22, of Ma'ale Efraim; as Israelis attack Palestinian Authority Chairman
Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah in the afternoon, tanks firing directly
at his private office (which he had left), and taking control of most of
the buildings in the complex, including the prison holding the suspects
in the assassination of Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi in October
2002. [photo: tank shell explodes inside Arafat's headquarters >]2002 Israelis Rachel Levy, 17; and Haim Smadar, 55, security
guard; and Ayat Akhras, 16, girl suicide bomber from the
Deheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem, of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades,
in a supermarket on Uruguay Street in Jerusalem's Kiryat Yovel neighborhood
shortly before 14:00.2002 Michael Orlanski, 70, Tuvia Wisner,
79, and a Palestinian who stabs them, in the Netzarim enclave settlement
in the Gaza Strip, hides for over six hours, then tries to attack a settler
and is shot by him. Orlanski and Wisner, Jews from Tel Aviv, were visiting
their son Yossi Orlanski, a settler.1994 All 4 passengers and
2 crew members aboard a Beech Queen Air B80 of Kiwi West Aviation
which, at 12:10, crashes into trees in a residential neighborhood near Hamilton,
New Zealand, after experiencing an engine failure while taking off. 1991 Lee Atwater, 40, political strategists, of brain
tumor.1991 Gerardo Molina Ramírez, ideólogo y político
colombiano.1985 The Singing Nun and her friend Annie Pêcher,
hounded by tax collectors, commit suicide in Belgium with an overdose of
alcohol and barbiturates. The Singing Nun was Jeanine
Deckers, born on 17 October 1933, who joined the Dominican Fichermont
Convent in Belgium. Popular in the convent for her music, she was encouraged
by the other nuns to record an album in 1963, and one song, "Dominique,"
soared to the top of the charts in the United States. Overnight, the Dominican
nun was an international celebrity with the stage name of Soeur Sourire.
She performed in concerts and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.
In 1965, a movie called The Singing Nun, starring Debbie Reynolds,
was made about her, though she rejected the film as "fictional." As the
1960s progressed, the Singing Nun stopped performing and entered a rigorous
religious life in the convent in 1965. In 1967, however, she left the convent
to pursue her musical career, though most of her earnings still went to
the convent. Nevertheless, she was a one-hit wonder, who gradually faded
into obscurity, not least because of her own disdain for fame: her second
album, released in 1967, was aptly titled I Am Not a Star. Though
she was deeply religious, she was also increasingly critical of the conservatism
of the Roman Catholic Church, and she became an advocate of birth control.
Having faded into obscurity, she opened a school for autistic children in
Belgium with a close friend, Annie Pêcher. By the early 1980s the
Belgian government began claiming that she owed back taxes; she claimed
that the money was given to the convent and therefore exempt from taxes. 1983 Maurice
Kendall, mathematician.1982 Indalecio Liévano
Aguirre, historiador, político y estadista colombiano.1980
José María Peiró, de 13 años, alcanzado por la explosión de una
carga depositada por ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) en una bolsa de deportes
bajo el coche de un guardia civil, en Azcoitia (Guipúzcoa), es el primer
niño muerto por el terrorismo en España.1980 Cochran,
mathematician.1977:: 13 of the 20 passengers and 2 of the 3
crew members aboard a de Havilland Canada DCH-6 Twin Otter 300
of Merpati Nusantara Airlines which stalls and crashes into trees in the
Bainaha Valley of Indonesia, as a result of the pilot applying full power
and going into too steep a climb in an effort to clear a mountain that he
had suddenly noticed just ahead.1962 Zwelibanzi Kwetshuba,
Black from Pongoland, executed by the South African apartheid regime.

^1944 Grace Chisholm (Young),
English mathematician, first woman Ph.D. in Germany.Grace
Chisholm was born on 15 March 1868 in Haslemere, near London, the youngest
of three surviving children. Her father was Warden of the Standards in the
British government, in charge of the department of weights and measures.
Her brother was sent to grammar school, a prestigious boarding school, and
then earned a top scholarship to Oxford, but in the custom of the times
in England, Grace and her sister were taught at home by their mother and
a governess. At the age of 17 Grace Chisholm passed the Cambridge Senior
Examination. Her family encouraged
her to become involved in social work among the London poor but Grace wanted
to continue her studies. Her mother would not allow her to study medicine
so she decided to study mathematics at Girton College, part of Cambridge
University. Girton, opened in 1869, was the first school in England dedicated
to educating women at the university level. Grace Chisholm entered Girton
in 1889 at the age of 21. At Girton her tutor was William Young. Women could
not earn formal degrees at Cambridge at that time, but in 1893 she passed
her final examinations (Mathematics Tripos) and scored the equivalent of
a first-class degree. Grace Chisholm
wanted to continue in mathematics but women were not yet admitted to graduate
schools in England so she went to Göttingen in Germany to study with
Felix
Klein. This was one of the major mathematical centers in the world.
The decision to admit her had to be approved by the Berlin Ministry of Culture.
Under Klein's supervision, Grace Chisholm
earned the Ph.D. magna cum laude, in 1895. Her thesis was on The algebraic
groups of spherical trigonometry. Again government approval had to
be obtained to allow her to take the examination. She thus became the first
woman to officially receive a doctorate in any field in Germany. Although
Sofia Kovalevskaia had been awarded a doctorate in mathematics in absentia
from Göttingen in 1874 after submitting a thesis, the rules for doctoral
degrees had become stricter, and Grace was required to take courses and
pass a difficult examination showing broader knowledge as well as prepare
a thesis in order to receive her degree.
The year after her Ph.D., Grace Chisholm married William
Henry Young, who had been her tutor at Girton College. William Young
was also a mathematician. Between them they wrote about 220 mathematical
articles, several books, and had 6 children within the span of 9 years.
It is not clear how much of the collaboration is really Grace's work and
how much is her husband's, but it is now generally agreed that William Young
would probably have accomplished very little without the help of his wife,
a fact he often acknowledged. Grace wrote up his papers for publication,
often filling in proofs and correcting mistakes. But she also produced a
substantial amount of excellent work herself despite the fact that her husband
was often away from the family for large parts of the year, leaving Grace
to take care of the children and home at La Conversion, near Lausanne in
Switzerland, to where they had moved from Germany before WW I, as anti-British
sentiment was increasing in Germany. In 1915, she wrote a paper on the foundations
of calculus that won the Gamble Prize at Cambridge, and later published
a book on geometry and one on set theory with her husband.
Besides her extensive work in mathematics, Grace Chisholm Young completed
all the requirements for a medical degree except the internship, learned
six languages, and taught each of her six children a musical instrument.
She left Switzerland in 1940 with the approach of World War II, but her
husband could not get out. He died in 1942, and two years later Grace suffered
a heart attack and died on 29 March 1944. The Fellows of Girton College
had just recommended that she be awarded an honorary degree, but she died
before it could be given to her.
Of her six children,

the first son, Francis (1897-1917), a Royal Flying Corps aerial observer,
was killed in World War I;

the oldest daughter, Cecily (later: Mrs. R.C. Tanner, 1900-1992), took
a doctorate in mathematics at Girton but was still not able to receive
a formal degree from Cambridge (1929) since such degrees were not yet
being granted to women. Despite this, she went on to become a tenured
member of the University of London;

the second daughter, Janet (born in 1901), became a physician and the
first female member of the Royal College of Surgeons. She married a Jewish
refugee from Germany, Stephen Michael, a research chemist. They had children,
William, Dorothy, and Ptk.

the third daughter, Helen Marion (born 20 September 1903 in Göttingen),
completed her undergraduate studies in mathematics at the University of
Lausanne. She did additional graduate work in other subjects at Bryn Mawr.
In 1929 she married a Frenchman, Jean-Marie-Félix Canu, a professor
of history at Bryn Mawr. They had two children in Bryn Mawr, Jean-François
(born 27 February 1930) and Anne-Marie (born 9 December 1932). That family
settled in France in 1934 and weathered the World War II in occupied France,
in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. There the third child was born,
Pierre-Henri-Raimond-Maximilien, on 16 February 1943. Helen Young Canu
died of cancer on 24 December 1947. Jean-François Canu obtained
a degree in mathematics and became successively a research mathematician,
a Catholic priest, and a school teacher, before retiring in 1999. Anne-Marie
Canu became a cloistered Benedictine nun for some ten years, and then
a pediatric psychoanalyst in Paris. Pierre Canu became a corporate lawyer
in the US.

the second son, Laurence (born in 1905), was also a mathematician,
teaching at the University of Capetown, South Africa, and later at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was also a chess grandmaster. His
children were Frank, Rosalind, David, Sylvia, Beatrice, Angela.

the youngest son, Patrick (born in 1908), did his academic training
in science, but pursued a career in finance and business.
One of Grace Young's fourteen grandchildren,
Sylvia Wiegand,
fifth of the six children of Laurence Young, is a mathematician at the
University of Nebraska (as is her husband Roger
A. Wiegand) and a past president of the Association for Women in Mathematics.

^1794 (9 germinal an II) Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas
de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet, 50, in prison.
Born on 17 September 1743, Condorcet
was a French philosopher of the Enlightenment, advocate of educational
reform, and mathematician. He was one of the major Revolutionary formulators
of the ideas of progress, or the indefinite perfectibility of mankind.
Condorcet was a zealous propagator
of the progressive views then current among French men of letters.
A protégé of the French philosopher and mathematician Jean Le Rond
d'Alembert, he took an active part in the preparation of the Encyclopédie.
He was elected to the permanent secretaryship of the Academy of Sciences
in 1777 and to the French Academy in 1782 and was a member of other
European academies. Condorcet
published his Vie de M. Turgot in 1786 and his Vie de
Voltaire in 1789. These biographies of his friends reveal his
sympathy with Turgot's economic theories about mitigating the suffering
of the French populace before the French Revolution and with Voltaire's
opposition to the church. The
outbreak of the French Revolution, which he greeted with enthusiasm,
involved him in a great deal of political activity. He was elected
to represent Paris in the Legislative Assembly and became its secretary;
was active in the reform of the educational system; was chief author
of the address to the European powers in 1791; and in 1792 he presented
a scheme for a system of state education, which was the basis of that
ultimately adopted. Condorcet was one of the first to declare for
a republic, and in August 1792 he drew up the declaration justifying
the suspension of the king and the summoning of the National Convention.
In the convention he represented
the département of Aisne and was a member of the committee on the
constitution. His draft of a new constitution, representative of the
Girondins, the more moderate political group during the Revolution,
was rejected, however, in favor of that of the Jacobins, a more radical
political group whose dominating figure was Robespierre. In the trial
of Louis XVI he voted against the death penalty. But his independent
attitude became dangerous in the wake of the Revolution when Robespierre's
radical measures triumphed, and his opposition to the arrest of the
Girondins led to his being outlawed. To occupy his mind while he was
in hiding, some of his friends prevailed on him to engage in the work
by which he is best known, the Esquisse d'un tableau historique
des progrès de l'esprit humain (1795). In
March 1794 Condorcet thought that the house in which he was hiding
in Paris was being watched by his enenies and he no longer felt safe.
He fled from Paris and after three days he was arrested and imprisoned
in Bourg-la-Reine on 27 March 1794. Two days later he is found dead
in his prison cell and it is not known whether he died from natural
causes, was murdered, or took his own life. Dans
la liste des victimes de la Terreur, on trouve cette notation:CARITAT,
ci-devant marquis de Condorcet, né et domicilié à Paris, député à
la convention nationale du département de l’Aisne, mis hors la loi,
par décret de la convention du 28 Jul 1793 pour s’être soustrait au
décret d’accusation, et par suite des malheureuses journées des 31
mai, 1 et 2 juin; il s’est soustrait au jugement; mais il est mort
de misère dans une prison aux environs de Paris, ayant été arrêté
au Bourg-Egalité, comme suspect et sous un autre nom. 
Fragonard engraving CONDORCET
SE DONNANT LA MORT DANS SA PRISON; le 28 Mars 1794 ou 8 Germinal de
l'an 2 de la Révolution. [Fragonard's own version
of date and cause of death].
CONDORCET ONLINE:Esquisse
d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain 
Esquisse
d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain

1792 King Gustav III king of Sweden, of wounds. 1631 Jorge Manuel Theotocopuli, Spanish (not Greek?) artist
born in 1578.1629 Jacob Gheyn II, Dutch draughtsman,
engraver, and painter, born in 1565.  MORE
ON GHEYN AT ART 4 MARCHwith
links to images.

^1954 Karen Anne Quinlan, comatose patient
in famous right-to-die case. Born,
in Scranton, Pennsylvania, at age 21 Quinlan would collapse after
swallowing alcohol and tranquilizers at a party on 15 April 1975.
Doctors saved her life, but she suffered brain damage and lapsed into
a "persistent vegetative state." Her Catholic family waged a much-publicized
legal battle for the right to remove her life support machinery. They
succeeded, but in a final twist Quinlan kept breathing after the respirator
was unplugged. She remained in a coma for almost 10 years in a New
Jersey nursing home until her 11 June 1985 death from pneumonia..
[key
excerpts from Supreme Court of New Jersey decision]

^1919 The First Tatras.
The First Tatra vehicle, a TL4 truck, was completed. The truck was
Tatra’s first offering to the automotive world but it was the Tatra
car that had inspired engineer Hans Ledwinka to found Tatra. Just
after the war, Hans Ledwinka began construction of a new automobile
to be marketed under the marque Tatra, a division of the newly named
Koprivnicka Wagenbau of Czechoslovakia.
The Tatra High Mountains are among the highest mountains in the Carpathian
Mountain Range, the legendary home of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Ledwinka
settled on the name Tatra in 1919, when an experimental model of his
car with four-wheel brakes passed a sleigh on an icy mountain road,
prompting the sleigh riders to exclaim, "This is a car for the Tatras."
In 1923 the first official Tatra automobile, the Tatra T11, was completed,
and Ledwinka’s hope for an affordable "people’s car" was realized.
The reliable, rugged T11, like Ford’s Model T, gave many Czechoslovakians
their first opportunity to own an automobile. In 1934, Tatra achieved
automotive press with the introduction of the Tatra 77, the world’s
first aerodynamically styled automobile powered by a rear-mounted
air-cooled engine.

^1918 Samuel Moore Walton.
Samuel Moore Walton, US retail magnate; founded Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
Walton began his retail career at J.C. Penney in Des Moines, Iowa
in 1940 earning $75 per month. In 1945, Sam borrowed $5000 from his
wife and $20'000 from his wife’s family to open a Ben Franklin five-and-dime
franchise in Newport, Arkansas. In 1950, he relocated to Bentonville,
Arkansas, and opened a Walton 5&10.
Over the next 12 years they built up and grew to 15 Ben Franklin Stores
under the name of Walton 5&10. When the Ben Franklin management rejected
his idea of opening discount stores in small towns, Sam and his brother
James (Bud) opened up their first Wal-Mart Discount City store in
Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962. Walton and his wife Helen had to put up
everything they had, including their house and property to finance
that first, 1700-square-meter, store.
They went public in 1970 with 18 stores and sales of $44 million.
By 1980, there were 276 stores with revenues of over $1.2 billion.
In the early 1980’s, Wal-Mart opened the membership only Sam’s Wholesale
Clubs. In 1985 Walton's 39% ownership in Wal-Mart made him the richest
multi-billionaire in the US. In 1991 Wal-Mart surpassed Sears to become
the country's biggest retailer. When Walton died in 1992, the family's
net worth approached $25 billion.Today, Wal-Mart has over 700'000
associates (employees) worldwide with more than 3000 stores,
annual sales of over $100 billion, is in operation in all 50 US states
and it’s still growing. He wrote Sam Walton, Made in America:
My Story. Walton died on 05 April 1992, with his family's net
worth at $25 billion.

1916 Eugene
Joseph "Gene" McCarthy, US politician, author, and poet, from
Minnesota, who died on 10 December 2005. He served in the US House of Representatives
from 1949 to 1959 and the US Senate from 1959 to 1971. In the 1968 presidential
election, McCarthy unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for US
president, on an anti-Vietnam War platform, against incumbent Lyndon
B. Johnson [27 Aug 1908 – 22 Jan 1973], which led to Johnson withdrawing
his candidacy on 31 March 1968; the Democrats nominated Vice President Hubert
H. Humphrey [27 May 1911 – 13 Jan 1978], who lost the general election
against Richard
Nixon [09 Jan 1913 – 22 Apr 1994]; McCarthy unsuccessfully sought the
Democratic presidential again in 1972 and 1992. He was a token candidate
for President in 1976 an an Independent, and in 1988 backed by a few left-wing
state parties. — (051211)1905 Edward Burra,
British painter, illustrator, and stage designer, who died on 22 October
1976. — more with
links to images. 1902 Sir William Walton, England,
composer (Troilus and Cressida). He died on 08 March 1983.1902.Marcel
Aymé, à Joigny, écrivain.1899 (17 March Julian)
Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, Russian director of the Cheka in Georgia,
then head of the NKVD succeeding Nikolay I. Yezhov (who was shot on orders
from Stalin in 1938). Beria carried out purges and (as head of the MVD Ministry
for Internal Affairs) administered the Gulag. After Stalin died in
1953, Beria tried to succeed him as dictator, but was outmaneuvered by a
coalition led by Malenkov, Molotov, and Krushchev, who accused him of being
an imperialist agent and of conducting criminal antiparty
and antistate activities, for which they had him executed on 23 December
1953.  The Soviet secret police started in December 1917 as the Bolshevik
Cheka (short for VECHEKA All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for
Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage), then in 1922 was supplanted by
the GPU (State Political Administration) renamed in 1923 OGPU
(Unified S.P.A.). In 1934 was created the NKVD (People's
Commissariat of Internal Affairs) which took over the secret police.
In 1954 it became the KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti
Committee for State Security) which started by purging Beria
supporters. — Having joined the Communist Party in 1917, Beria participated
in revolutionary activity in Azerbaijan and Georgia before he was drawn
into intelligence and counterintelligence activities (1921) and appointed
head of the Cheka (secret police) in Georgia. He became party boss of the
Transcaucasian republics in 1932 and personally oversaw the political purges
in those republics during Stalin's Great Purge (1936–1938). Beria was brought
to Moscow in 1938 as the deputy to Nikolay Yezhov, head of the People's
Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the Soviet secret police. Yezhov
was apparently arrested and shot on Stalin's orders, and Beria became head
of the secret police (1938–1953). He supervised a purge of the police bureaucracy
itself and administered the vast network of labour camps set up throughout
the country. In February 1941 he became a deputy prime minister of the U.S.S.R.,
and during World War II, as a member of the State Defense Committee, he
not only controlled the Soviet Union's internal-security system but also
played a major role in raw-materials production using the slave labour in
the camps. He was made a marshal of the U.S.S.R. in 1945. He was also a
member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party from 1934 and of
the executive policy-making committee,the Politburo, from 1946. When the
Politburo was reorganized as the Presidium in 1952, Beria retained his seat.
Two days after the death of Stalin [21
Dec 1879 – 05 Mar 1953], Beria became one of four deputy prime ministers
as well as head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, an organization which
at that time combined both the secret political and regular police functions.
During the ensuing struggle for power, Beria apparently attempted to use
his position as chief of the secret police to succeed Stalin as sole dictator.
By July 1953, however, he had been defeated by an anti-Beria coalition (led
by Georgy M. Malenkov [13 Jan 1902 – 14 Jan 1988], Vyacheslav M. Molotov,
and Nikita S. Khrushchev). He was arrested, deprived of his government and
party posts, and publicly accused of being an “imperialist agent” and of
conducting “criminal antiparty and antistate activities.” Convicted of these
charges at his trial, Beria was immediately executed, on 23 December 1953.
1896 Ackermann,
mathematician.1895 Anne Redpath,
British artist who died on 07 January 1965. — more
with links to images.1895 Ernst Junger, escritor
y filósofo alemán.1892 Jozsef Mindszenty, Hungarian
Catholic priest; Cardinal, opposed totalitarianism of Nazis and Communists,
was persecuted, imprisoned. He died on 06 May 1975.1892 Maria
Muraro, Italian who live past her 2004 birthday.1889
Howard Lindsay, US playwright, producer and partner of Russel Crouse.
Lindsay died on 11 February 1968.1888 United Parcel Service
is founded by James E Casey.
1886 Coca-Cola created (with cocaine)1882 The Knights
of Columbus are chartered in Connecticut.1853 Elihu
Thomson, US engineer and inventor; founder of US electrical industry,
who died on 13 March 1937. 1873 Tullio
Levi-Cività, mathematician. 1829 Ritta
and Christina Siamese twins, in Sardinia.1826 Wilheim
Liebknecht, dirigente socialdemócrata alemán. 1825
Faà
di Bruno, mathematician.1819 Isaac Mayer Wise,
Bohemian-born US rabbi; organized Reform Jewish institutions in US. [That
was Wise.] He died on 26 March 1900. 1819 Edwin Drake
drilled first productive US oil well.1818 Gonsalvo Carelli,
Italian artist who died in 1900.1802 Johann Moritz Rugendas,
German artist who died on 29 May 1858.  MORE
ON RUGENDAS AT ART 4 MARCHwith
links to images. 1790 John Tyler, in Charles City
County, Virginia, 10th Pres (1841-1845) (the first president to marry while
in office). He died on 18 January 1862.1788 Carlos María
Isidro de Borbón, aspirante carlista al trono de España.
1758 Scott-Pierre-Nicolas Legrand de Lérant, French
artist who died on 11 May 1829.1561 Santorio Sanctorius,
Trieste, Italy, Italian physician; introduced use of precision instruments
in medicine. He was burned at stake as a heretic on 22 February 1636.